Membrane Processes for Energy Saving in Japan

Over the last 20 years, membrane separation processes, such as reverse osmosis, ultrafiltration and microfiltration, have been widely adopted by different industries. Commercial uses of membrane have displaced conventional separation processes, such as distillation, evaporation, precoat filter and so on. Membrane separation processes are often more capital and energy efficient when compared with conventional separation processes. Membrane devices and systems are almost always compact and modular. These are the well-known advantages of membrane separation processes. The disadvantage of the membrane process is that the process does not have scale merit and thus the membrane process is suitable for the small and middle size applications. Energy saving is, of course, the biggest advantage of the membrane process, and in many industries the membrane processes are employed because of this reason. Membrane process has other big advantage. In many applications membrane processes provide much higher quality of product than conventional processes. The example is ultrapure water production by membrane processes in semiconductor industry. Conventional technologies never offer such good quality of pure water. If you can obtain both energy saving and higher quality of product at the same time by membrane processes, this is the best application of membrane processes. One example is the concentration of orange juice by membrane, which has already been commercialized in Japan. Comparing with the conventional vacuum evaporation process, juice concentrated by the membrane process has much better taste and flavor and the energy consumption in the membrane process is much less than the evaporation process. In this paper, first membrane separation technology will be classified and then Japanese membrane manufacturers and new modules and devices under development in Japan will be introduced. Fourth energy saving in membrane process will be discussed and finally practical applications of membrane processes in Japan will be shown.